A TWIST ON TRADITION
If Traditional Home magazine is a little too staid and stuffy for your taste, maybe you'll like its new offspring. Publisher Meredith recently announced that the purveyor of stately, old-school style has procreated with Lonny, an online magazine devoted to "accessible style," to create a new online spinoff: Trad Home.
Lonny co-founders Michelle Adams and Patrick Cline have been enlisted to act as midwife. The new title is designed to reach "a younger generation of readers," and will feature a blend of content from both Lonny and Traditional Home. Will this odd-bedfellows e-zine blend into something worth trying at home? Stay tuned. Trad Home is set to debut in May, with a follow-up issue in September.
KIM PALMER
DREAM ON
Dying to see the inside of the "luxuriously furnished" HGTV 2011 Dream Home? You can take a virtual tour of the alpine lodge in Stowe, Vt., before the contest officially begins.
It's the 15th year for the popular HGTV sweepstakes, which will give the Grand Prize winner the romantic retreat with everything in it, as well as a 2011 GMC Acadia Denali and $500,000. Past Dream Homes include a New Mexico mountain abode and a Victorian farmhouse in Georgia.
But you can't throw your hat in the ring until Jan. 1. Then you can enter once a day until Feb. 18 at www.HGTV.com and www.FrontDoor.com.
LYNN UNDERWOOD
ACCESSIBLE DESIGN
Celebrated New York designer Alexa Hampton shows a Midwestern sensibility in "The Language of Interior Design" (Clarkson Potter, $50).
While its glossy pages reveal work she's done on 18 luxe projects for moneyed clients, the book speaks to those who want to distill Hampton's knowledge for their own more modest homes.
Hampton asserts that four elements of design (contrast, color, proportion and balance) are what imbue a room with rhythm, liveliness, harmony and equilibrium. And she argues that this language can be taught to those who aren't born with an eye for good design. To that end, she offers several practical sidebars on window coverings, lighting, fabric schemes and furniture placement, among others. Timid homeowners can't help but be inspired, and emboldened, by this book.
KIM YEAGER
